Russian landmark contest fiasco highlights widespread xenophobia

Heart of Chechnya Mosque

A contest intended to inspire patriotic good feelings in Russia has
turned into political disaster, highlighting the mutual xenophobia
between ethnic (Orthodox Christian) Russians and (Sunni Muslim) North
Caucasians.

The nationwide "Russia 10" contest was launched in March with the
purpose of selecting a symbol for the Russian Federation from a roster
of architectural and geographic landmarks across Russia's nine time
zones. Russian citizens voted online or by text message. The contest
drew little attention until July, when a public relations campaign in
the North Caucasus province of Chechnya, led by Chechen leader Ramzan
Kadyrov, led to the "Heart of Chechnya Mosque" in Grozny shooting far
into first place. The mosque received almost 40 million votes, even
though Chechnya's population is only 1.3 million, because Russians
were allowed to vote as many times as they wanted, and because Muslims
all across Russia joined in.

Well, this infuriated the ethnic Russian nationalists, who would find
a mosque intolerable as Russia's national landmark, and who started an
online “Anything but the mosque” campaign. Suddenly, in the last two
days of August, another building, Kolomensky Kremlin (citadel) in
Kolomna, suddenly received tens of millions of new votes, beating out
the mosque by only 400,000 votes. Kadyrov is screaming "blatant
fraud," and is demanding a refund of all the texting fees -- millions
of dollars that the cell phone companies made in texting fees -- and
has called for a boycott of the cell phone companies. The last round
of voting will is still in progress, but so far, all the contest has
done is highlight the growing hatred between ethnic Russians and North
Caucasians. Jamestown and RFERL

Defecting Syrian Army general may play transitional role

Reports indicate that Syria's former defense minister General Ali
Habib has defected to Turkey. He was dismissed as defense minister in
2011 when he broke with president Bashar al-Assad over the use of the
military against civilian protesters. There are hints that the
U.S. and the Russians are actually in agreement about something,
namely that General Habib might play a role in a new Syrian government
if al-Assad could be made to disappear. There have been numerous
defections from al-Assad's government since 2011, but almost all of
them have been Sunni Muslims. Habib's defection would be significant
because he's a Shia/Alawite, so he could potentially represent the
Alawite community in a deal to end the war. Hurriyet (Istanbul)